A hundred eighty-six thousand miles!
February 11, 2015 8:02 PM   Subscribe

It wasn’t easy to buy a car in the Soviet Union. Usually, the first thing to do was to sign up on a decade-long waiting list to register your interest in owning a vehicle. Secondly, you needed to save what was then a huge sum of money; a new Zaphorozhets cost the equivalent of about 30 times the average monthly salary. A few people found a different way, however – assembling cars with their own hands.

More pictures of more homemade Soviet cars: The Exhibition of Soviet Home-Made Cars at English Russia (Only in Russia!)
posted by Rustic Etruscan (16 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
This makes me sad. What could Mr. Karavkin have accomplished with his tremendous ingenuity, resourcefulness, and drive under a different regime?
posted by prefpara at 8:08 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Nice post. Togliaati is our sister city.
Hardworking folks.
posted by clavdivs at 8:09 PM on February 11, 2015


Johnny Cash's plan to get it one piece at a time didn't work nearly as well.
posted by beaning at 8:15 PM on February 11, 2015 [10 favorites]


It's odd that a nation with that much empty space does not have more of a car culture.
posted by Renoroc at 8:18 PM on February 11, 2015


This makes me sad. What could Mr. Karavkin have accomplished with his tremendous ingenuity, resourcefulness, and drive under a different regime?

Like if he had been born in the Freedom-Loving West? He'd probably be inventing shit sold via infomercial. Because he's too old to be developing more goddamn apps.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:22 PM on February 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


You kids, get off of my LADA!
posted by clavdivs at 8:26 PM on February 11, 2015


How many hectares on a tank of kerosene?
posted by 445supermag at 8:34 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


“Therefore, my advice for the do-it-yourselfers who might want to “reinvent the wheel” as I did would be not to waste so much time on this venture. Buy a car from a dealer, now it is not a problem anymore.”

love it.
posted by small_ruminant at 8:40 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


2O Krocs per hour, if their pushing.
posted by clavdivs at 8:40 PM on February 11, 2015


The Super Rally is Europe's annual gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts; it's in a different city every year, and I was at the Paris Rally in 1992 when the Harley Owners Group of Poland made their first foray into the West after the fall of the Iron Curtain. You couldn't buy a Harley in Communist Poland, of course... but what you could do is find wrecked bikes left behind after WWII, and then hand-machine all the parts you needed to make them run again. They were barely Harleys at all; they were mostly hand-built works of motorcycle art. The guys were a little embarrassed at their poverty - they had brought cheap t-shirts to sell so they could earn enough gas money to get back to Poland. Tell you what though - the shirts sold out in a day, and those guys didn't buy their own beer all week.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 8:43 PM on February 11, 2015 [38 favorites]


It's odd that a nation with that much empty space does not have more of a car culture.

I'm surprised that they didn't develop a Socialist Evel Knieval back in the 70's.
posted by thelonius at 8:43 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Put it in H!"
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 8:45 PM on February 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


How many hectares on a tank of kerosene?

"That country no longer exists."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:58 PM on February 11, 2015


What could Mr. Karavkin have accomplished with his tremendous ingenuity, resourcefulness, and drive under a different regime?

He might have invented derivatives or sub-prime lending.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:48 PM on February 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


What a cool guy! Too bad he chose such an ugly interior design - maybe the box didn't come with a photo on it, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt.
posted by oceanjesse at 4:44 AM on February 12, 2015


Lots of home built and kit cars in america so maybe he would have built it anyways if things were different.
posted by Mitheral at 8:01 AM on February 12, 2015


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